Attendees who had paid the $125 admission price did not have tickets waiting at the door, as promised. Also missing were any Clio officials and Clio President Bill Evans. The event did not start on time; in fact, people stood around drinking, schmoozing, and trading rumors about Evans and the Clio organization for over two hours. Finally, the lights dimmed and the band started playing. A man walked up to the microphone and began to speak. He identified himself as the caterer and announced that the master of ceremonies was a no-show, but that he would give it a shot. It started out well, but after being informed that there was no script and no winners list, he gave up and walked off. A second fellow walked onstage and began talking, but was not a polished speaker; it was obvious that he was inebriated. Print ads were the first awards, and there were transparencies of the winning entries. As each image appeared on screen, the owner of the work was asked to come to the stage, pick up their Clio, and identify themselves and their agency. When the last award in the category was dispensed, the band began playing an interlude, and the emcee began singing. The audience began booing and throwing dinner rolls, and the drunk staggered offstage. Several minutes passed, but no one took his place. As the people began to leave, one man mounted the stage, strode to the table of remaining statuettes, snatched one up, and waved it as he left the stage. Two other individuals claimed their own awards; then suddenly, the stage was stampeded by a feeding frenzy of advertising executives, intent on the Clios that remained.

The event for television commercials, scheduled a few days later, was called off when the Clio Company didn’t come up with cash for the facility’s deposit.

The story behind the 1991 fiasco slowly emerged. Bill Evans began to delegate all responsibility for the Clios to his 11-person Clio staff in 1989. Although he had stopped coming to the office, he continued to spend money at an alarming rate. Bills weren’t being paid, and Evans would not return phone calls from the Clio office. Privately, the staff was worried about Evans’ alleged drug addiction. He was offered loans if he would surrender financial control of the Clios, but he refused. After 3 people were arrested at Evans’ home on drug charges, drug rumors escalated. At the end of April 1991, the Clio Company was broke. After going unpaid for most of May, the staff, which included Evans’ daughter, walked out.

Friday, we went to see Endeavour’s fly-by of NASA Ames. Ming wasn’t too crazy to go at first, but she relented. It’s the last time anyone was going to see a shuttle in the air. Although Maximilian isn’t going to remember this, I still wanted him there. (Got to start them out early on science.)

When reading up about the shuttle retirement, I came across this image on wikicommons:This flag first flew on the first shuttle mission, and then again on the last one. It was left behind on the ISS to be retrieved by next US launched manned mission. It’s kind of sad and nice at the same time. A “We will return,” promise. (Albeit not likely in a spaceplane.) I had no idea that this flag existed. NASA has also slated this flag to fly on the next manned mission to leave Earth orbit. The sentimental part of me likes that there’s this symbol that’s passed from crew to crew, even if its history only goes back to 1981 instead of 1961.

Thursday, September 20, 2012 between 9:00 am and 9:30 am, the Space Shuttle Endeavour is going to make a fly over of NASA Ames on it’s way down to Los Angeles and its destiny of being a museum piece. I’ve went to a launch of STS-26, the return-to-flight mission after Challenger, and I saw the shuttle sitting on the 747 at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi of all places back in the early 90s.

So the San Jose Night Market has shutdown. It’s a bit of a shame too. Ming and I went to the second one back in late July or early August. It was interesting, but also a bit disappointing. I knew it was going to be a bunch of food trucks since Movable Feast was organizing it, but I expected a bit more. A bunch of crappy fair t-shirts being sold out of tents wasn’t what I was hoping for, but it was kind of what was there, and what I kind of feared would be there. I don’t regret going, and we talked about going again, but then the market was suspended as they “re-vamped”.

Still, the reason why they shut down is just pathetic, and I blame San Jose. Essentially, the city got upset that someone had the audacity to sell food at night, and to use &endash; gasp! &endash; tents! This is “Hello City Planner!”* all over again.

I guess this means that next time Ming and I want food trucks, we’ll have to go to Willow Glenn on Fridays.

*: It always shocks me that this is an official San Francisco City Planning video.

IBM Watson really is an amazing piece of software, much more interesting than Deep Blue. Chess, like all board games, is very artificial. While there’s no doubt a technical achievement in being able to search a large number of well defined states in parallel, but it is a bit abstracted from real problems. Watson on the other hand deals with natural language. You ask it random lookup questions, and it answers. It’s a technology – along with Siri – that is futuristic.

Exhibit A

Danny Boyle has decided that Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller will share the roles of Dr. Frankenstein and the monster, switching roles every night of the his stage production of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

Blind Date Swingers Club is a rotating club event in Berlin, that sounds very cool, and very reproducible. Everyone brings a mix tape (well, CD) of music, along with a note and contact information inside the jewel case. The music is left with the DJ. At the end of the night, everyone takes a CD that someone else made.

I love how this is a really simple idea that encourages the discovery of new people and new music. I’d love for a Bay Area version of this.